Recent news from Bratislava suggests that on January the 13th and 14th, the
Prime Pinister of Slovakia, Vladimir Meciar has made a new offer of
out-of-court settlement to his Hungarian counterpart: Gyula Horn.
The proposal would in effect complete the original 1977 plan, except that the
lower dam would be rebuilt a few kilometers to the west of Nagymaros and the
C-variant at Cunovo (Dunacsun) would be eliminated.
The Hungarian Prime Minister has the following to consider:
1) The Hungarian Constitution requires all governments to protect the
integrity of the nation's territory and therefore no Hungarian Government can
agree to give away any section of Hungary's border river.
2) The Hungarian Parliament's vote (resolution 93/25) is still in effect and
requires the Hungarian Government to follow through with the Hague lawsuit.
Before they can legally abort the lawsuit, it is necessary for the Parliament
to reverse its previous vote. The Parliament is in recess.
3) The Meciar proposal does not include compensation for the approximately $1
billion value of electricity, which Slovakia obtained from the energy of the
jointly owned border river.
4) The proposal does not include the restoration of the Szigetkoz wetlands,
nor the protection of the drinkingwater supplies (ground and river waters).
5) The Gabcikovo (Bos) project, this white elephant of stalinist gigantomania
(including environmental and water supply costs) has already cost Hungary
$6.8 billion, some of which is yet to be paid (to Austria). Even the present
composition of the Parliament is not likely to approve an other $1+ billion
for a new dam.
6) If the lawsuit in the Hague is carried to its conclusion and the Court
approves the NGO proposed Compromise Plan, the ecosystem and the water
supplies would be restored and the above costs saved.
For the above reasons, it seems, that an out-of-court Meciar-Horn deal would
have serious political consequences. Yet it is not unthinkable, because both
prime ministers were in favor of the project as Communist functionaries prior
to 1989.
prof. Bela Liptak

KINDER AND GENTLER TO THE ENVIRONMENT?
Retaining ethically challenged Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House makes
little difference to the environment. Much more important were the
congressional committee chairmanships handed out last month. Despite
Republican assurances to the contrary, those appointments indicate an ongoing
disdain for the natural resources of our nation and the people who care about
them.
American voters of all ideological stripes want clean air, clean water, public
parks, abundant wildlife, and preservation of soils, waters, and forests. We
rarely elect folks with such tunnel vision that they can see no value in a
landscape unless it is turned into pulp, beef, houses, or hydropower. But
there are always a few environmental grinches in Congress.
Check the contributors to those grinches and you'll see lumber and mining
companies, grazing interests, developers. Nearly all grinches are Republicans,
but not all Republicans are grinches. In fact, grinches are in the minority,
which is why until recently both parties stood behind our environmental laws.
Then came the last Congress, the fighting 104th, in which the newly dominant
far-right Republicans placed arch-grinches in charge of the Senate and House
committees on natural resources. Last month, despite pleas from
environmentalists, those appointments were renewed.
Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska, once and future chairman of the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has an impeccable record of voting to
weaken the Clean Water Act (several times); to subsidize coal, oil, uranium,
grazing, mining, and timber companies; to cut funding for enforcement of
environmental regulations; to kill citizens' right to know what toxic wastes
are released in their neighborhoods; to set aside the Endangered Species Act
(many times); to ... well, the list is way too long to complete here.
Senator Murkowski seems to have two overriding missions. One is to get oil
drilling into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he insists on calling
the "Arctic Oil Reserve." The other is to protect the exclusive right of the
Ketchikan Pulp Company, a subsidiary of Louisiana Pacific, to clearcut the
Tongass National Forest at taxpayer expense. Last fall Murkowski held up
funding for parks in 40 states in order to bargain with the White House to
extend Ketchikan's privilege.
Representative Don Young, re-appointed Chairman of the House Resources
Committee, also of Alaska, has a record similar to Murkowski's and a sharper
tongue. Environmental groups like to collect choice Young quotes, such as:
"[When I see a tree,] I see paper to blow your nose."
"[Environmentalists] are a socialist group of individuals. I'm proud to say
that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans,
never will be Americans."
"If you can't eat it, can't sleep under it, can't wear it or make something
from it, it's not worth anything."
"If I have my way, I'm going to dissolve the Forest Service. They're in the
business of harvesting trees and they're not harvesting trees, so why have them
anymore?"
"The environmentalists -- the self-centered bunch, the waffle-stomping,
Harvard-graduating, intellectual idiots that don't understand that they're
leading this country into environmental disaster."
"We wonder why we have got the Freemen or the militants. We wonder why we have
got unrest in this country. It is because our government, in fact, has got out
of hand and out of line, with the Endangered Species Act."
Ignorance, and arrogance like this might be expected occasionally in the
Congress. But party leaders should know better than to put the priceless
natural resources of our land into the hands of grinches. Over the past two
years Murkowski and Young have held biased hearings, brought in industrial
lobbyists to write bills, and moved through Congress dozens of destructive
measures, most of which President Clinton didn't sign, some of which he did.
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently wrote in the New York Times,
"Republicans should not allow the fringes of the party to set a radical agenda
that no more represents the mainstream of Republicans than environmental
extremists represent the mainstream of the Democratic party." But that's what
Republican leaders (not just Gingrich) have done, again.
The 105th Congress will not repeat the frontal attacks on the environment that
proved so unpopular last time. Murkowski and Young will just quietly cut
enforcement budgets, exempt their friends' special projects from environmental
laws, weaken citizen power, hang sneaky riders onto unrelated bills, and kill
research and data collection so no one will measure the damage.
The only place you will be able to see the damage will be on the land.
(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)